Deliberative democracy
Citizens: theorists have developed many variants on the basic deliberative model, but for all of them the cognitive burden placed on citizens is generally at least somewhat higher than on the liberal and competitive-elitist models.
The distinction between proceduralist and epistemic interpretations of deliberative theory does not really change this burden all that much, since the quality of procedures includes criteria like the informedness and reasoning of the deliberators (Neblo, 2006). That said, some have overestimated the cognitive demands on the deliberative account. The idea is not that average citizens should quit their day jobs and spend all of their time deliberating about all the issues of the day. The main claim is only that the quality of the reasoning processes feeding into the policy process (as they are broadly understood) matter for judging the quality of the outcomes (Lazer et al., 2015). Since, on most deliberative accounts, the line between average citizens and officials is at least somewhat blurred, their need for both cognitive and conative humility increases accordingly. Moreover, worries over vices of excess loom larger on the deliberative account. Denigrating one's cognitive status and legitimate conative claims is more likely to lead to injustices on the deliberative model than on the other two (Wu, 2011).When citizens themselves have the responsibility of seeing their interests heard and prioritized rather than leaving most of these demands up to officials, the interests of the too- humble citizen are more likely to be ignored in favor of the interests of the more assertive.Officials: since, on the deliberative model, citizens, officials, and experts are all responsible for the quality of debate, the cognitive demands on officials is somewhat less (in relative terms) than on the other two models.
Rather than officials being first movers (as with the competitive-elitist theory) or second movers (as with liberal theories), the deliberative model imagines a much more recursive and cooperative process cycling through the larger political system (Lazer et al., 2011). Both cognitive and conative humility, then, are importantly and somewhat distinctively directed among civil society, formal government actors, and expert communities.Experts: as with elected representatives and governmental officials more generally, experts bear a bit less of the relative cognitive burden of forming good policy on the deliberative model because their cognitive status is something akin to first-among-equals, rather than constituting a qualitative break in deliberative capacity regarding policy. Jasanoff (2003), for example, argues for “technologies of humility” vis-a-vis scientific expertise in democracy.As such, experts' need for both cognitive and conative humility, while still substantial, is less acute than on the other two models. Given that the deliberative model requires more humility on the part of the average citizen than the other models, we need to analyze such demands in practice to see how democratic citizens might practicably realize such virtue.
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